1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device including a channel-forming region composed of a dioxaanthanthrene compound, a method of manufacturing the same, and a method of forming a multilayer semiconductor thin film including a semiconductor layer composed of a dioxaanthanthrene compound.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, semiconductor devices including semiconductor layers composed of organic semiconductor materials have been receiving considerable attention. In such semiconductor devices, semiconductor layers can be formed by low-temperature coating in contrast to structures including semiconductor layers composed of inorganic materials. Therefore, such semiconductor devices are advantageous in that device area can be increased, and can be disposed on a flexible substrate that has low heat resistance, such as a plastic substrate. An increase in the range of functions and a reduction in cost are also expected.
As organic semiconductor materials constituting semiconductor layers, for example, polyacenes, such as anthracene, naphthacene, and pentacene, the structural formulae of which are shown below, have been widely researched to date.

These acene compounds have high crystallinity because of strong cohesion resulting from the intermolecular interactions utilizing the “C—H . . . pi” interactions between adjacent molecules. Here, the “C—H . . . pi” interaction is one of the interactions acting between two adjacent molecules and refers to the state in which the C—H groups (edges) in the periphery of a molecule are weakly attracted toward the pi orbital (faces) above and below the molecular plane, generally resulting in an edge-to-face arrangement. In the solid state, the molecules pack in a herringbone arrangement in which the molecules are in contact with each other at planes and sides. It has been reported that such an arrangement provides high carrier mobility and exhibits excellent semiconductor device properties (refer to Wei-Qiao Deng and William A. Goddard III, J. Phys. Chem. B, 2004 American Chemical Society, Vol. 108, No. 25, 2004, p. 8614-8621).
However, in general, it is considered that the herringbone packing arrangement is disadvantageous to carrier conduction in view of overlapping of molecular orbitals when compared to packing in the pi-stacking arrangement in which molecules are stacked such that the molecular planes are arranged in parallel. Accordingly, a method has been proposed in which the herringbone packing arrangement is prevented by introducing bulky substituents into the pentacene skeleton, and the pentacene backbones responsible for carrier conduction are allowed to pack in a pi-stacking arrangement as shown in FIG. 9 (refer to U.S. Pat. No. 6,690,029 B1).